Taming Power - Selected Works 2000 FLAC

Why do people experiment? Listening to this recording happily deconstructing it's own sounds under it's own steam might answer the question. This is a different take on feedback to DAVID MYERS', but no less valid. What starts of as electronic faults reaches some bizarre areas of pitch alteration as it undergoes various processes. From clicks and thumps it eventually travels to VARESE-terraformed areas of sonic weirdness. Okay, so there must be at least one processor used here - I cannot see how tape machines could come up with such clean digital delay - but I'm willing to buy into the idea that the metamorphic deconstruction is all the result of tape-fed-to-tape.

As the experiment progresses on the second side, you seem to get a combination of THE KLANGERS having one mother of a row, mixed with what could be human voices (and I just know there are some gravely sincere folk out there who would run this as a loop and believe someone is trying to communicate from beyond). The further it gets the more we have to face up to the fact that feedback it 'things going wrong'. Having said which, it actually gains structure later on, becoming a recognisable sequence. Towards the end it becomes an almost bagpipe-like dronework - the electronic equivalent of some insect hive. Beyond this it transforms into the shrill screams of agonised spirits, wraiths eternally shrieking their torments, then to urgent trills and burrs, almost turning full circle to mockeries of it's original fault.

Whether it is what it says or not, it's still an intriguing listen. Don't expect songs or rhythms of any particular structure, but it is a very noisy, active experiment which transmutes second by second. And if you expect hiss from these generations of tape degeneration, you'd be surprised at the clarity of these recordings. What the record does lack is a guide to just what has gone on to deconstruct to the level it does - is it just tape playing to tape, or are there processes involved?

Originally reviewed for Metamorphic Journeyman.